On Tuesday May 14, the Académie Goncourt in Paris announced the lucky winners of the Prix Goncourt de Printemps 2024 (first novel, short story, biography and poetry). In the poetry category, Louis-Philippe Dalembert was awarded the Prix Goncourt de la Poésie Robert Sabatier for all his writings.
This is a great recognition for the 62-year-old Haitian writer who has published – notably with leading French publishing houses – a dozen novels, two collections of short stories, two essays and eleven collections of poetry, among other works…
The first literary work published by the 20-year-old Louis-Philippe Dalembert was a collection of poems entitled “Évangile pour les miens” (Éditions Choucoune, 1982); the latest is “Ces îles de plein sel et autres recueils” (Éditions Point Poésie, 2021).
French and Creole are the languages used by the author. Louis-Philippe Dalembert (a graduate of École Supérieure de Journalisme de Paris), was also part of the ex Creole editorial staff of Radio France International (RFI) in Paris where I was a young trainee journalist in 1994 and I met him and where he was jokingly nicknamed “Particule” by colleagues, due to his name evoking aristocracy…
The writer has also taught at several universities in France, Germany, Switzerland and the United States.
In his forty-year literary career, Louis-Philippe Dalembert has received numerous awards and distinctions. We can only imagine how proud the Caribbean author would be to win the Goncourt de la Poésie, this prestigious prize awarded every year since 1985 to a poet for his or her entire work…
